The Darling Buds of Chardonnay
Trip Start
Nov 01, 2004
1
35
51
Trip End
??? ??, 2006
Blenheim,
New Zealand
Tuesday, September 6, 2005
Some travellers want to discover new cultures, some want to find themselves and I suspect a lot just want an extremely long holiday from work.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm broke, so it was time to get a job. I was hoping to see an advert for a "backpacker type, preferably female, to bottle feed orphan lambs". Despite the presence of huge numbers of lambs in the fields there doesn't seem to be too much demand for surrogate sheep mothers at the moment. So the only other job I could think of that doesn't require a CV, evil recruitment consultants, an interview or work clothes was in a vineyard.
I am now a wrapper (of vines) and Brian is a stripper (and pruner of vines)
Al in Dunedin
. It's sort of like Wycliff Jean and his go-go dancing girlfriend only less bling. In fact a lot less bling. More wellies and gardening shears actually. We're both working for an outfit called Vinepower. But instead of empowering vines, as the name would suggest, we're cutting them. stripping them and wrapping them around fruiting wires. I also break a lot of vines by accident. The plus side of working in a vineyard is lots of sunshine, a great tan, no phone calls, no questions, no emails and a productivity based wage (we're generally taking 15 cents a vine). The down side is no breaks (see productivity based wage above), a farmer's tan and very sore hands. Unlike any office jobs I've had I don't need three cups of coffee, a smoothies and something nice for lunch to get me through the day. It's also nice to know that the small role I'm playing in wine production will make people happier (and drunk).
In my group of wrappers there's not a lot of talking. In fact after spending over 100 hours standing at a grapevine I can safely say that the popular music lyrics and gossip mongers are wrong. You don't hear anything on the grapevine. Except for the odd rustle of a leaf or the twang of a vine as it unwraps itself and smacks you on the head. Having lasted 11 days makes us old timers now. Our friend Simon started work last Monday and quit on Tuesday.
Brian's group of pruners are a bit more interesting. There's a guy who looks like he's from somewhere in Eastern Europe, who sounds like he's from somewhere in Eastern Europe but who claims he's Scottish. There's a Kiwi bogan who shouts about wanting to burn down the whole fucking vineyard when he's in a bad mood
Calling into the McCabes and Kennas
. And there's a really nice local guy who Brian gets on well with. But he doesn't come into work everyday because sometimes he's in jail and sometimes he has to go to court. It's great having a job with no interview or recruitment standards. Sure there's a few weirdos/criminals/mildly insane - but no more than your average office job.As a result of getting up each morning at 6am and falling asleep by 10pm we haven't seen too much of Blenheim. We're living in a cool hostel called the Graevine. Everyone here is working so the main topics of conversation are as follows:
1. How sore your hands are today
2. Hourly wage versus contract work
3. How much longer the pruning and wrapping work will last
There's a river at the back of the hostel with free canoes. If our hands ever stop aching so much we may get around to using them. A bit of hard work never killed anyone. We'll see about that!
On an un-work-related note we did escape Blenheim and drive 1400 kilometers the other weekend to see a rugby match. But it was the All Blacks against the Springboks in Dunedin (Carisbrook Stadium - also know as the House of Pain) so it was well worth the effort. We met up with Al who sorted us out with accomodation - sweet as! Dunedin was a bit antartic so we would've frozen to death sleeping in the car. The All Blacks preformed their new haka for the first time and we saw the entire Springboks team at their hotel. From the looks of them I'd say they could make good money if they tried pruning as a career.
Comments
My Raisins For Leaving Work
Thanks for the mention Ciara, but I had many valid reasons for leaving and its not simply because I'm a ningnong.
See you in the car.